Investing

Meanwhile, in what we might call the real world, as opposed to accounting-land, Berkshire’s equity holdings averaged about $200 billion during the…

Berkshire earned $42.5 billion in 2020 according to generally accepted accounting principles (commonly called “GAAP”). The four components of that…

Operating earnings are what count most, even during periods when they are not the largest item in our GAAP total. Our focus at Berkshire is both to…

The two GAAP components pertaining to capital gains or losses (whether realized or unrealized) fluctuate capriciously from year to year, reflecting…

As I’ve emphasized many times, Charlie and I view Berkshire’s holdings of marketable stocks – at yearend worth $281 billion – as a collection of…

Berkshire owns a wide variety of businesses, some in their entirety, some only in part. The second group largely consists of marketable common stocks…

Whatever our form of ownership, our goal is to have meaningful investments in businesses with both durable economic advantages and a first-class CEO.…

I make many mistakes. Consequently, our extensive collection of businesses includes some enterprises that have truly extraordinary economics, many…

Early in 1965, things changed. Berkshire installed new management that redeployed available cash and steered essentially all earnings into a…

Charlie and I allocate your savings at Berkshire between two related forms of ownership. First, we invest in businesses that we control, usually…

Our goal in both forms of ownership is to make meaningful investments in businesses with both long-lasting favorable economic characteristics and…

One advantage of our publicly-traded segment is that – episodically – it becomes easy to buy pieces of wonderful businesses at wonderful prices. It’s…

Controlled businesses are a different breed. They sometimes command ridiculously higher prices than justified but are almost never available at…

In what I next relate, bear in mind that Charlie and his family did not have a dime invested in the small investing partnership that I was then…

Nevertheless, Charlie, in 1965, promptly advised me: “Warren, forget about ever buying another company like Berkshire. But now that you control…

************ Writers find it useful to picture the reader they seek, and often they are hoping to attract a mass audience. At Berkshire, we have a…

We, however, are left uncomfortable. At Berkshire, our view is that “earnings” should be a sensible concept that Bertie will find somewhat useful –…

Sometimes I’ve made mistakes in assessing the future economics of a business I’ve purchased for Berkshire – each a case of capital allocation gone…

Pete paused as his wife, daughter and I leaned forward. Then he surprised us: “Well, I looked at Berkshire’s proxy statement and I wouldn’t want to…

The four of us then went to dinner at Omaha’s Happy Hollow Club and lived happily ever after. During the next 19 years, Pete shot the lights out.…

But I’ve also had many pleasant surprises in both the potential of the business as well as the ability and fidelity of the manager. And our…

And Warren and I don't feel like we have any great advantage in the high-tech sector. In fact, we feel like we're at a big disadvantage in trying…

Confronted with a like challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, MARGIN OF SAFETY.

The stock market is a voting machine rather than a weighing machine. It responds to factual data not directly but only as they affect the decisions…

I determined that the proper policy was "to put all good eggs in one basket and then watch that basket."

We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability…

拼多多将是个勇于投资未来，立足长远的公司。

But you have to know enough about it to understand its limitations—because although accounting is the starting place, it's only a crude approximation.

Competition was so intense that, once it was unleashed by deregulation, it ravaged shareholder wealth in the airline business.

Every person is going to have a circle of competence. And it's going to be very hard to advance that circle.

The determining trait of the enterprising (or active, or aggressive) investor is his willingness to devote time and care to the selection of…

There is no close time connection between inflationary (or deflationary) conditions and the movement of common-stock earnings and prices.

If you are a prudent investor or a sensible businessman, will you let Mr. Market’s daily communication determine your view of the value of a $1,000…

Diversification is an established tenet of conservative investment. By accepting it so universally, investors are really demonstrating their…

An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and a satisfactory return. Operations not meeting these…

The essential point is that security analysis does not seek to determine exactly what is the intrinsic value of a given security.

It is our view that stock-market timing cannot be done, with general success, unless the time to buy is related to an attractive price level, as…

The rule that a sound investment must be able to withstand adversity seems self-evident enough to be termed a truism.